Perhaps I’ll reveal my age by bringing up this animation from the 60s that I recall from my childhood, Mary Mungo and Midge – on viewing it again recently I was taken back to my early love of animation and illustration – and not surprising when presented with cartoons as illustrative as this. Yes, the story is slow and aimed at the young and that cut out cartoon method looks clunky but the overall affect still has charm. In this episode Mungo teaches Mary about the difference between painting and printing – you may learn something too!

I’ve just come back from seeing my first session of international short animations at the Melbourne International Animation Festival. And with every year, and with each session, it can always be relied on that there is an outstanding animation feature – and for me this session it was from Canada’s animator Theodore Ushev, titled ‘Lipsett Diaries’, written by Chris Robinson – a short animation based on a diary from Arthur Lipsett who was a Canadian avant-garde director of short experimental films (13 May 1936 – May 1, 1986). This is their interpretation of these diaries – find out more on the film here. Certainly worth taking a look.

And an insight into the painstaking process Theodore Ushev undertook to creative this lavish animation.

This is a bit of a promo video from Pantone to launch their new colour range – but it still presents us with a bit of a background to what goes in to making the unique colours and creating the colour system that all print-based designers rely on.

Making Faces is a documentary on the dying art of letterpress craftsmanship – featuring the Canadian graphic designer and letterpress printer Jim Rimmer, who passed away at the beginning of this year. The film was produced by P22 Type Foundry and more about the film and it’s indended release to DVD can be found here and here

A recent graduate of design has put together this rough guide to screen printing – a nice insight into the process of taking design to screen printing on a small scale – despite the overpowering music track!

Spotted this video of a motion graphic presentation taken from the 99% Conference 2010 – and annual conference designed to help translate ideas from vision to reality. Check out their Vimeo page, 99%, for more inspiring videos from the conference.

Though this film exaggerates what can happen with the design process in a humorous yet disturbingly accurate way, it does demonstrate how a design process can run off course – with the dreaded “design by committee” approach and the over thinking and over cautious approach driven by the ‘need’ to satisfy every scenario and every audience.